What is Soul? The Very Basics of Soul-Based Coaching
Every day, I get up early every morning to write morning pages. It’s something I’ve been doing on and off for basically twenty years. It’s a practice that comes out of Julia Cameron’s many books on writing, but most notably from her work The Artist’s Way, which is a curriculum intended to reconnect writers and artists with the universe in a way that alleviates creative blocks and opens new pathways to healing and creation. In a way, I have come to believe this is how I can best listen to my soul. Even as I write that, I wonder: what do I mean, exactly?
Writing beneath a full yet fog-obscured moon, it occurred to me that writing morning pages is a practice that is a lot like holding space, which is something I learned how to do last year when I became a Certified Soul-Based Coach. Not that I want to get too much in the weeds about holding space (that’s another article for another day), but dropping down and truly listening, whether you do it for yourself or for someone else, is a powerful way to open the gates to healing and transformation.
And yet, that word “soul.” What is it and where does it come from? And how does the soul have anything to say about our lives, our hopes and dreams, and directions?
When I tell people I am a Soul-Based Coach, many of them look at me like I’ve had too much Kool-Aid to drink, or they give me a look that says: “I’m sorry you spent so much time and money on something that is neither tangible nor real.” In other words, it’s either too spiritual or not enough; too woo-woo and not enough substance.
And yet, I can’t help but wonder if there is fear around the word “soul,” too. What if “soul” turns out to be something other than what we thought it would be? Less or more tangible, less or more mysterious? Maybe it is something we want to remain in the dark about, and that is better not knowing.
What, for you, is “Soul”?
Maybe you are wondering not only about your own definition of the word “soul” but also about what a Soul-Based Coach does. While there are step-by-step descriptions I could give you of the coaching process, I think it’s worth pausing beneath the full moon on a foggy and dark morning to answer the question: What, for you, constitutes “soul”?
Unlike many of our high-level concepts which borrow words with Latin roots (think of words like “inspiration,” “essence,” “conscious,” and “courage”), the word “soul” has Ango-Saxon roots. This is remarkable because most English words that belong to an “elevated” class of ideas are almost always Latinate words.
The reason for this can be traced to the Norman Invasion of the British Isles in 1066 by William the Conquerer, which replaced the Anglo Saxon aristocracy with a Norman (i.e.: French-speaking) one. (You’d later see this power struggle play out in the 100 Years War, but linguistically the 1066 date is more interesting.)
This is the event that moved “Old English” a.k.a. Anglo Saxon to a more recognizable “Middle English” with an infusion of new vocabulary and (thankfully) sentence structures that are more dependent upon syntax (word order) rather than its grammatical case. In my opinion, this is the second-best linguistic development in the history of the English language. The second is the “Great Vowel Shift” that occurred between 1400 and 1700 CE that moved English into its “modern” form. Not to say that I’m perverted exactly, but it was always the easiest answer to remember on linguistic exams because “vowel” rhymes with something else that can also have great movements.
Ahem.
Anyway, the Norman Invasion is the reason why in English we serve “poultry,” for dinner but raise “chickens” on the farm or dine on “beef” in restaurants but speak of “cows” grazing in the pasture. The language of “dining” (something the aristocracy did as opposed to “eating”) uses words with Latin roots that came into English via French. The language of the common world — the one concerned with the body, with agriculture, with work, with “common” tasks, and the outside world— is Anglo-Saxon (which is to say, Germanic, and those words entered our language via low or high German.)
“Soul,” however, is a Germanic word and beyond the Old English sawol, it has an uncertain origin. Its initial definitions vary: some say it meant “the spiritual and emotional part of a person, animating existence, life, living and being” or “a substantial entity believed to be that in each person which lives, feels, thinks and wills.”
There is a theory that ties the word to the ocean; meaning: “coming from or belonging to the sea.” According to this source, the ocean was thought to be the last place a soul would stop before either birth or death. In any case, the word was first remarked in literature in the Eighth Century epic poem Beowulf, a piece of literature I studied as an undergraduate and graduate student, and that I also taught later in my career as adjunct faculty. In the poem, the word appears as the monster Grendel dies, diving into the swamp “sending his soul to hell.” Again, the association between life force and water — and transformation — is interesting. And, it is notable that “soul” in this scene also conveys a sense of “source,” without which the character’s life is meaningless.
And yet, how does this relate to our understanding of “soul” and what it means to be a “Soul-Based Coach?” A lot, actually. And it all has to do with the knowledge that comes from physical experience, or as I like to say: knowledge that comes from the body.
Knowledge from the Body
Whatever your definition of “soul”, you have to admit the word has certain proximity to both the body and to the earth. It is as though the word “soul” has its roots in experiences and sensations, or as the spark by which we experience and come to understand these things. Or, perhaps as a bridge between our completely human lives and a larger spiritual existence that, by way of the soul, provides a connection or a way of understanding our place both on the earth and in a larger sense of our life’s purpose.
Both these ideas provide a useful gateway from what the soul clearly is not: the soul is not the mind, nor does it rest completely in the body. Rather, it seems to be half in the body and half in another realm that’s not accessible to us in any conventional, logical way. Soul can be something we know partially, but it’s often connected to higher planes of thinking: the conceptual, metaphorical and existential.
It’s no coincidence that Soul-Based Coaching is a way to access a different realm of knowledge that is tied to our bodies and (to borrow a term from modern psychology) our “True Selves” because it creates a safe space in which a client can explore these relationships between what is known, unknown and what they would like to have happen. Conversations that we don’t often hold, even with ourselves, given the state of our world today.
Let’s face it: we tend to over-intellectualize our lives. Bent over cell phones, texting, typing email, creating content: we live in a time when the product of the human mind is the avenue toward white-collar salaries. While this may seem like a good thing, in becoming advanced texters, social media queens, bloggers, communications experts, etc. etc., we often forget that our physical experiences form the basis by which we can best know the world… and ourselves. The skin is our largest sensory organ, after all, and the body stores knowledge in its tissues in various ways.
Soul-Based Coaching is a gentle entry point to regain connection to the body’s knowing — and to the knowledge that we do not have access to in our conscious minds. Based on the work of psychotherapist David Grove, which was later developed and systematized by Penny Thompkins and James Lawley, Soul-Based Coaching uses a series of questions called “Clean Language Questions” to direct a client’s attention toward their desired outcome.
By learning more about this outcome, a series of symbols and metaphor landscapes emerge. These are models for the client’s understanding of themselves in the world, as well as their relationship to what they would like to have happen in their lives. The important element of this is the metaphor (or metaphors) which act as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious part of the mind.
My first experience with Soul-Based Coaching demonstrated exactly this. I was a practice client for a friend and colleague who was also working toward her certification in Soul-Based Coaching. I had no idea what to expect and when I wanted to get around the creative block I faced at that time — which seemed like a very thick red brick wall. During the session, I realized that the wall didn’t stretch very far at all, and all I had to do was run my hand along its rough edge until I found where it ended.
And yet, the problem with my creative block was hardly solved. Next, I found myself standing in a wide and open field after that, with so much space that the space itself created a kind of block — it was overwhelming to me, standing on the edge of something so large and not knowing what direction to take. I asked myself: If there was no path to follow, where would I go?
By using the Clean Language questions, holding space, and using yin healing, my friend guided me through this metaphor landscape where I discovered that I had the power to create paths of my own — and that it didn’t matter that these paths were not the paths trod by others. In fact, that desire to create something new and unexpected has become my artistic, creative, and entrepreneurial strength. I create my own belonging.
In this way, our metaphors about who we are and what we want are very much like our understanding of “soul” — it is our essence, our spark, our understanding of where we have been and where we are going. Metaphor is the language of the soul — or, according to some, these are the invisible traces, the blueprints by which we can build the lives we were meant to lead. They are, after all our lives. What better role can we have than to create them?
Our Metaphors as Soul
These symbols and metaphors are also something generated completely by the client. The Clean Questions we use as Soul-Based Coaches remove the facilitator from the process as much as possible, meaning that the answers to the Clean Questions, the symbols, and the metaphors that emerge are the authentic creations of the client. This is extremely important and perhaps key to the question of why “soul” matters: because it’s ours.
Our knowing. Our metaphors. Our relationship to the past and present, to our feelings, to ourselves, and to others. There’s nothing imposed from “without” or “on” our internal systems. Instead, Soul-Based Coaching is a way to access your own inner system, which enables a deeper self-awareness and a gentler, more streamlined approach to transformation and change.
Much of the work I have witnessed with clients happens at this level: of creating connections between conscious experience and unconscious knowing by locating these desires, fears, words, feelings — symbols that arise in a session — within or around the client’s body. This increased spatial awareness works its magic for many reasons, but quite simply: we learn where we are.
And by knowing where we are, we can begin to understand many things. Mainly: where we have been going, and where we want to be. Perhaps we discover our journey is like climbing a mountain or crossing an ocean. Or, perhaps we discover what we called our obstacles are not really obstacles at all.
These are what our souls can whisper to us, if we are willing to listen.
Rebecca A. Eckland, M.F.A., M.A., M.A. is a professional nonfiction writer based in Reno, Nevada. She is also a certified Soul-Based Coach and through her business, With Wings, LLC, she offers entrepreneurs, artists, and all those seeking clarity on their next steps in life and business support on cultivating their creativity and moving forward on their life journeys. Learn more about her, or book a coaching session.
